Thinking about the readings you have down so far (GHOSTS OF BERLIN, INTRODUCING GLOBALIZATION, AGE OF IMMIGRATION, NEW ETHNIC MINORITIES, IDENTITY and LANGUAGE LEARNING and EUROPEAN OTHERS, as well as "What Does it Mean to be a German?" discuss one or more of the themes of the programs (per the topic list below) and how the readings speak to these theme(s). Also, consider what research you will be doing in Berlin and begin to craft a research question and topic statement.
**For a reminder and guidelines on research in Humanities and Education visit:
Humanities Research
Education Research
On Saturday, we will discuss research methods in more depth and more specifically international interdisciplinary research methods as we prepare for Berlin.
Topic List
This course investigates individual,
cultural, and national identity formation, what determines identity labels and
who defines social capital. We will use a comparative interdisciplinary model
to learn about topics including:
•
Literature of Migration (literature
of identity) Asylum policies (Dublin 2 and 3 laws);
•
Urban Identity and Border Identity;
•
Identity and natural world (distance
of the natural world to urban world and reconsidering what makes us human);
•
Migration and Education;
•
Identity and Environment;
•
Identity Migration and Education;
•
Borders and Frontiers
(Canada/Mexico/US border; German east and west border; Arctic border and
territory issues and its global ramifications related to national and
individual identity formation; border patrol policy at the US/Mexico
cross-roads, for example);
•
Refugee/migration movements in US and
Germany related to identity politics and the view of the “refugee and
“immigrant” as cultural tokens and foils (individual, family, and
nation-state);
•
Investigation of identity
reformulation/myth making of refugees and migrants (including a parallel study
of east German, and U.S./Mexican identities).
We will also address art and performance as forms of
resistance serving to deflect identity tropes.
